When the war in Syria took off there were some contested
stories over whether Moqatada al-Sadr had sent his men to fight there or not.
One problem was the fact that the Sadr movement had splintered so much during
the U.S. occupation that it was often difficult to determine who was and wasn’t
part of it. Sadr initially said he was opposed to intervening in the conflict
on religious and political grounds. Eventually he did decide to join in after
lobbying by Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah, and to keep up with the other major
Shiite parties in Iraq.
As soon as President Bashar al-Assad came under threat from
protesters and later rebels Iran
stepped in to protect the regime, and called on its allies in Iraq and Lebanon to
help. Starting in early 2012 Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, Kataib Hezbollah, the Badr
Organization, Hezbollah Nujaba, Kataib Sayid al-Shuhada, and others along with
Lebanese Hezbollah began deploying
to Syria. The Iraqi groups justified their presence in Syria as protecting the
Sayid Zainab shrine in the Damascus suburbs. They were also afraid that Syria
might fall to Sunni jihadists. Finally, they were all close to Iran and have
worked with it before, and Tehran’s main goal is to keep Assad in power. Some
like Kataib
Hezbollah for example, were creating by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Many
of these groups were made up of former Sadrists, making it difficult to
determine whether Sadr was involved or not. The spokesman for Liwa al-Imam
al-Hussein for example said
that it was made up of former Mahdi Army fighters. At the same time, almost all
of these groups were connected to Iran, which Sadr has had a very difficult
relationship with. During the occupation Sadr asked Tehran for assistance to
fight the Americans, and he went into self-imposed exile there from 2008-2011.
At the same time, Iranian leaders found
Sadr difficult to work with and actively tried to break his group apart leading
to the creation of Asaib Ahl Al-Haq and others. Given this history it was not
surprising that Sadr was not immediately involved in the Syrian conflict.
Sadr has publicly denied that he joined the war. In June 2012,
Sadr said that none of his men had gone to Syria, but that breakaway groups
could have. Two years later he told Al
Hayat, “What is happening in Syria is an internal issue and no one is
entitled to interfere.” Sadr however has worked covertly before, not wanting to
publicly take responsibility for some of his actions, and Syria proved to be
the same.
Sadr also had religious objections to Iran and others intervening
in Syria, but eventually joined in to keep up with his political competitors. According
to Al Rai’s Elijah Magnier, Sadr told Iran and Hezbollah that Assad should be
defeated so that the Mahdi could return. According to Shiite Islam, three
figures will appear Yamani, Khorasani, and Sufyani, and their struggle will
bring about the return of the Mahdi. Sadr told Tehran part of this battle would
take place in Al-Sham, Syria and therefore Assad had to fall. Sadr claimed that
Iran and its allies were preventing this from happening. Iran and Hezbollah
lobbied with Sadr asking him what if the Mahdi did not appear should Syria be
lost? This argument, along with the fact that most of the major Shiite parties
in Iraq were already fighting in the war, eventually led Sadr to send around
2,000 fighters to Syria in June 2013. Sadr did not want to lose out to his
competitors, and Iran and Hezbollah wore down his opposition. At the same time,
he did not want to be open about his involvement. He has therefore, kept on attacking
the Iraqi militias who went to Syria before him calling them “foreign entities”
for their Iranian backing, while taking part in the fighting himself.
The Syrian war has become part of the larger competition
between regional forces. Iraq’s Shiite parties have come to the side of the
Assad government along with Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah. It didn’t seem like
Sadr would have gotten involved in this conflict given his past with Tehran,
but its pressure along with Sadr’s desire to keep up with other Iraqi parties
made him throw in his lot. His forces are now in Syria with the rest even
though he continues to deny it. This follows Sadr’s pattern of not wanting to take
public responsibility for his actions. He took a similar path when he agreed to
Iran’s backing in 2004 to help him fight the Americans. Being an Iraqi
nationalist and his father’s opposition to Iranian influence he did not want
people to know about his new alliance. Instead he formed Asaib Ahl Al-Haq that
would act like an independent group, but would actually still be part of the
Sadr Trend. Still, Sadr’s commitment to Syria does not appear to be a large
one, and he may just want to be able to claim that he was involved in the fight.
SOURCES
Abbas, Mushreq, al-Taei, Sarmad, “Sadr calls on Maliki to
visit protest sites in Anbar,” Al Monitor, 1/5/14
Agence France Presse, “Sadr says his followers not fighting
in Syria,” 6/8/12
Haddadi, Anissa, “Syria: Iraq’s Muqtada al-Sadr Reported
Sending Fighters to Prop Up Assad Regime,” International Business Times,
11/23/11
Smyth, Phillip, “From Karbala to Sayyida Zaynab: Iraqi
Fighters in Syria’s Shi’a Militias,” CTC Sentinel, 8/27/13
- “The Shiite Jihad In Syria And Its Regional Effects,”
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, February 2015
Al-Tamimi, Aymenn Jawad, “The Return of Iraqi Shi’I Militias
To Syria,” Middle East Institute, 3/16/15
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